Moore was the captain of a sailboat that had just completed a race. He planned to sail home from Hawaii to California. The usual route went south, then east. The winds are strong there, and boats move quickly. Moore, however, was not in a hurry. He decided to sail directly east a slow route with weak winds. This region gets few visitors, so Moore was sailing into almost unknown waters.
What Moore found in the lonely North Pacific was a shock. Floating under the ocean's surface was a"soup" of plastic garbage. It was thick with billions of tiny plastic pieces the size of apple seeds. They made a clicking sound against the sides of the boat as it sailed along. Everyday plastic objects, such as shopping bags and water bottles, were trapped among the tiny pieces. In the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles from the nearest town, the sea of garbage stretched as far as Moore could see.
Moore and Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a researcher, began calling this area the Great Garbage Patch Ebbesmeyer was an expert in ocean
choking: unable to breathe or survive because something blocks the movement
patch: an area that s different in some way from the area that surrounds it